Page 168 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
I wasn’t breathing, a sob stuck in my throat and swelling so I couldn’t drag breath into my collapsing lungs.
There must have been a question in my eyes, a benediction.
A cry for help.
I had nowhere to run and everything to run from.
Only in my wildest dreams would Caroline Constantine, my last known connection to my father, ever offer me solace or protection.
Yet…
I watched mutely as she bent slightly in order to reach for me, tucking two fingers up under my chin to look down into my tear-wrecked face.
“Bianca Belcante,” she said, my name rolling like pearls against her tongue. “What a surprise.”
I hiccoughed.
“Bianca,” a masculine voice from behind Caroline spoke a moment before a tall, beautifully dressed blond man stepped in place beside her.
I blinked the wetness from my eyes as my brain struggled to place the somewhat familiar face. It only took me a moment to remember, maybe because I hadn’t experienced grief this strong since the day my mother died.
He’d been the man at Aida’s funeral, the one in the red scarf who’d looked like he wanted to approach me until Tiernan showed up to take us away.
“You know her?” Caroline asked, eyebrows raised.
He hesitated as he looked down on me, sympathy in his eyes, but displeasure marring his mouth. “Her uncle was an old friend of mine.”
I tried not to let my surprise show, because there was something going on here that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I hadn’t seen my uncle since I was a young child, well before we moved to Texas and I’d never met this man before in my life.
“Oh,” Caroline said with a cat-like grin. “I assumed it was because she is friends with Elias.”
“That too,” he agreed easily. “But Bianca, what’s brought you to tears in the middle of The Met?”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. I didn’t trust them, I didn’tknowthem, even though Dad had always spoken well of his wife. Even if wanted to though, I couldn’t have found the right words to explain the broken mess of my heart.
“Boy trouble?” Caroline asked coolly. “She is a teenager after all.”
I laughed weakly and nodded, because it was true, in a way.
Tiernan wasn’t aboy, but he was a man.
A monstrous one just like he’d warned me he was.
“I’m sorry,” the man said crouching so that we were on eye level. He bore a passing resemblance to my father, which could have explained why I let him reach out and take one of my hands warmly in his. “Elias is here with me, why don’t you come with me and we’ll find him. It looks like you could use a friend.”
“I could use a place to stay,” I blurted out, snot trailing from my nose.
“Hmm. I think we can find space for you at the Compound.” He looked back over his shoulder at Caroline who sighed wearily at their silent communication.
She studied me with sharp eyes, cutting into me like a scalpel, dissecting me as I sat on the floor of The Met in a thousand-dollar dress. I didn’t know what she sought, how pathetic I might seem to a woman so full of beauty and grace. Shame and trembling sorrow coursed through me, but I let her see it. All of it and all of me. I prostrated myself on the Constantine altar and hoped its matriarch would take pity on me. It was a poor choice, to turn to a woman who would hate me if she knew who my parents were, just because my dad had said she was a good woman. But I was out of good choices.
It was the devil I knew or the devil I didn’t.
At this point, the devil I knew, TiernanMorelli, could go straight back to hell.
“Well,” Caroline said finally. “You better get up and come with me. If we are going to present you to polite company, I can’t have you looking like a broken dove.”
I flinched at the reference, but she only arched an eyebrow at me, unsympathetic but helpful.
